Mr. Henry

Not every one of My Crazies have been, well, crazy.  Some people are just drawn to me by some invisible force, perhaps an inadvertent kinship or an unconscious trust that propels them in my direction.  I like to think there is a reason for it all, even if neither of us know what it is at the time.

I spent about a year of my life working in a Nursing Home as a Certified Nurse Assistant.  In that year I floated between the “low-maintenance” wing and the psych ward.  I know what you’re expecting:  some insane tale from the schizophrenic in room 203 who tried to have me arrested for attempting to assassinate the president.  Surprisingly, though, I had the most interesting experiences on the “low-maintenance” wing, the area of the nursing home in which residents received minimal assistance in daily activities.  These residents were there, at first, not because they were completely dependent upon the aide of others, but because what little help the did need was too much for their families to provide, for various reasons.  There, residents often entered the home with most of their cognitive faculties in tact, and, as time passed, I watched them slowly deteriorate from newly disabled and mostly independent elderly to completely vulnerable individuals who would eventually be transferred to the more intensive care-giving ward.

The descent, owing to a variety of factors among the residents, was a painful process to witness, and I remember wanting so badly to provide ease and peace as they spiraled toward their inevitable destination.

Mr. Henry was in residence at the Home for about a year before I arrived.  His family had placed him there, I was told by nurses, with transparent anxiousness to get him “out of their hair”.  The patriarch in him held strong, long past the point of passing the torch, and they could no longer patiently tolerate his insistence of actively participating in daily business.  They owned a local store, started by Mr. Henry himself, nearly sixty years before I met him. “He’s a pain in the ass,” the nurses warned, “just smile the best you can and try to get him to eat and wash himself so that you can move on to the next resident without smacking him”.

I first saw Mr. Henry in the dining room.  I sat at a table next to Miss Elsa, a tiny German woman who loved to pat my hand and kiss my face, smilingly refusing to eat.  “Nein, nein ich nicht essen darf. Ich muß sparen das essen für die kinder”.  Her German lost on me, I compromised and replaced her reconstituted jelly-meatloaf for a cup of hot tea, and looked around the room.  Mr. Henry sat alone, in a chair on the raised “stage” area of the room.  He sat back, legs crossed and head slightly a-tilt, surveying the room with the shadow of a satisfied smile.  I knew that, through the thick lenses of his glasses, his eyes did not see the dining area of a nursing home.  As his gaze fixed upon the others, he saw not residents, but customers.  He was seeing the folks he’d known for a lifetime, sitting in the cafe area of his five and dime, sipping coffee and nibbling at the pies his wife had made the night before.  The cafe area, I was told by a grandson, had been an inspiration from his daughter, who, at six years old, had asked, “Daddy, why are you so nice to all the customers?”  “Because they’re like family,” he’d told her.  “I love them like I love my brothers”.  The little girl, remembering her uncles’ ravenous appetites for her mother’s baking, said, “Maybe you should give them some of Mama’s pie”.  That weekend they’d cleared a small area near the counter, placed some thrift store table and chairs, and began serving coffee and pie.  Over the sixty years the five and dime grew into so much more:  people came to shop, eat, and speculate on local gossip.  Community groups, from the Boy Scouts to the Rotary Club often preferred the store for meetings than their own facilities.  Mr. Henry loved his store, loved his customers, loved his community.  And this is what he watched over, from his chair in the dining room.

I wasn’t assigned to care for Mr. Henry until about the second week of my stay at the Home.  I had served him coffee when I noticed his cup was empty, pulled out a chair here and there if I happened to be nearby as he was sitting down.  We made small conversation during these brief moments, me always respectfully calling him Mr. Henry and him always warmly calling me Cindy.  I corrected him once, about the third time he’d used the name, and the cloud of confusion that formed in his suddenly re-focused brown eyes made me lose my own balance.  I suddenly knew who Cindy was, and his feelings for her broke my heart.

During my second week, the charge-nurse asked me to escort Mr. Henry from the dining area, where the residents were playing bingo, to his room, help him wash, and dress him for bed.  “And stop letting him call you Cindy.  We have to try to re-orient the residents to reality.  It won’t help anyone to let them live in their little fantasy worlds”.  Wondering just who “anyone” was, the staff or the residents, I went to the dining room.   Mr. Henry was meandering from table to table, exchanging pleasantries with those seated before their bingo cards.  “Don’t forget a piece of Mable’s cobbler!…Did you see the sale on hammers and hardware?…  Spring’s coming! Need to gear up for repairing our fences after that big storm last month!…” The king of his domain, Mr. Henry smiled, tipped his hat to the ladies and shook the men’s hands.  Re-orient the residents to reality.  I decided at that moment that Mr. Henry’s world was much nicer, much more satisfying than any reality we could provide him in his last days.  And what more effort did it really require to accommodate his fantasies?  Really, only a little imagination and compassion.  I could afford that.

I approached the old man, at least two heads taller than myself,  and laid my hand gently on his arm.   “Mr. Henry,” I looked up into his eyes, “You’ve been here all day, why don’t you retire for the evening?”  He looked down at me, and smiled.  “Ah, Cindy, always looking out for me.  I’m fine, I need to stay and close up shop.”  “I can close up for you, Mr. Henry.  You need to get your rest.”  “Cindy, the last time you closed up for me you forgot to close the back window and a skunk got in and I had to shut the store down for three days while I got the smell out of everything.”  I implored Mr. Henry to give me a second chance at his trust, promising to remember the windows and doors.  “Well I am tired,” he finally conceded, “But no mistakes, this time, Cindy.”  Taking his arm, I convinced him that Billy, the stock boy, could cover my break that I would spend walking him home, and we left the dining room.  We walked, arm and arm, down the corridor as he pointed left and right, reminiscing about the streets he saw around him and how things had changed over the years.  The charge nurse glared at me from behind the desk as I thanked Mr. Henry again for trusting me to close up the shop.

Mr. Henry’s room seemed to alter his perception.  He sat on the edge of his bed as I gathered his pajamas and toiletries, rubbing his hands together and rocking in agitation.

“Where is Mable?” he asked, “She should be here.  Cindy, what are you doing here?  Why isn’t Mable home?”  Not knowing his family history I took a leap.  “Don’t you remember, Mr. Henry?  Miss Mable is at her sister’s house, the baby is sick.  She asked me to come and clean up for you tonight before you retired for the evening.”

His rocking continued for a few moments.  I could see that he was vacillating between his world and mine  and I took advantage of his momentary confusion to tend to his physical needs.  He blindly accepted the washcloth and toothbrush and made his way to the bathroom to clean up for bed.  When he returned he obediently put on his pajamas and climbed into his bed as I cleaned the sink.

His docility made me ache.  I wanted him to condescend to me, remind me to sweep the floor in the store before closing up.  I wanted him to be Mr. Henry.  Not my patient.

I pulled the blanket over his chest and opened my mouth to wish him a good night when he took my hand.  “You’re a good girl, Cindy.  Mabel was hesitant to hire you, you were so young with a baby and no husband.  But I knew you’d be good for her, for us.  Your eyes look so much like our Sarah’s, and your smile is as warm and easy as hers was.  You’ve become the daughter we lost so many years ago.  Thank you for helping us heal.”

*******

Mr. Henry died before my year at the Home ended.  During our time together the nurses and other aides continued to scold me for indulging his fantasies. Still, I persisted, and he fired me four times, gave me two raises. When I found him the morning after he died in his sleep, a picture of his daughter, Sarah, laid at his side, and on the pad of paper on the nightstand was a note, written with a  shaky hand:  “Merry Christmas, Cindy.  I’ll take care of your furnace, use your bonus to spoil your daughter!”